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The Drug War Comes To Maine

12/19/2013

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I just typed all this on Facebook, and it's long enough I hate to waste it.  Plus, it took some math to produce, and I don't like math.  So here it is.  First the link to the article that provoked me:

http://www.kjonline.com/news/Ten_people_face_drug_charges_following_Augusta_raid_.html

And what I wrote:

It took 12 years for this kind of news to catch up to me after moving from Arizona, where it is standard fare. I don't want Maine to go down the same expensive, hopeless, dangerous road. This article mentions Chicago gangs, which are documented to be connected to Mexican drug cartels, and the product is heroin, most of which is produced in Afghanistan.  If drugs were decriminalized and regulated, the black market profits would not exist that bring such people to Maine and cause them to fight to the death and endanger police officers and all of us to protect their money and avoid apprehension.  Two excerpts - "The gangs are drawn to Maine by its rural makeup and its drug-hungry populace" and "'They’ve set up business and it’s a good business, unfortunately,' Clark said" - explain it all.  The drug issue is about money, not drugs. The banned product could be anything. High-flow showerheads (a la Seinfeld), R-12 refrigerant (as was once smuggled), alcohol (as in Prohibition 1.0).  Except the addiction factor for those is not so high. The only way to kill the violence and mayhem and foreign intervention and multi-national criminal syndicates is decriminalization. Here's tonight's math.  The article says they seized 45 grams of heroin; the street value is $10,000; 1 ounce is 28.3 grams; so heroin is worth $6289 per ounce; 1 ounce of gold is currently worth a mere $1194; thus heroin is more than 5 times as valuable as gold; heroin is a renewable resource, made from opium, made from poppies; gold, despite the efforts of alchemists, cannot be grown or made; gold is precious because of limited supplies (and it's pretty); heroin is only this expensive because we have chosen to ban it, making it a high risk product shipped under complex, threatening, dangerous conditions across the globe to addicts who indeed value it more than gold and possibly more than their own lives.
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I.  Ron. Y.   or   Two-Faced Prohibition

9/6/2012

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Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!  Tonight, I juxtapose for you the following two articles from the same night's news (click titles for full articles):

Maine drug agents seize $275,000 worth of marijuana
"Maine drug agents have charged a Massachusetts man with cultivating marijuana after they raided a backwoods clearing in Limerick and seized pot they say was worth $275,000. "


With this:

New liquor contract could bring Maine extra $41 million
"The official who oversees the sale of hard liquor in Maine says the state can bring in $41 million a year in additional revenue while lowering costs to the consumer....Reid said they could use a new contract to try to lower the cost of alcohol in Maine. "

Who's the bigger "pusher"?  And please note that drug #1 above, has a reputation for causing inane laughter, mellowness, fellowship, and inexplicable love of The Grateful Dead and Phish.  Drug #2 has a reputation for causing fatal auto accidents and domestic violence, and was the subject of our last, failed, attempt to ban a substance with concomitant creation of a violent criminal syndicate for manufacture and distribution.

But, hey, I guess I should be glad my government is ensuring I can get even MORE alcohol at a CHEAPER price, while protecting me from a dangerous weed farmer, right?
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Why I Write About Decriminalizing Drugs

5/11/2012

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Having formed this opinion over 24 years ago and growing more convinced ever since, why do I care so much about the topic of drug prohibition in our society?  First, let’s cover a couple of things.

1) I do NOT want to legalize drugs so that I can use them.  I can actually say I have never used any of the drugs currently categorized as illegal.  (My parents will be relieved to hear that)  I am not a closet pothead who is chomping at the bit (or joint) to toke it up the day marijuana is legalized.  You won’t see me chanting “Free The Weed”.  I have no emotional attachment to the drug.  I don't even want to wear hemp clothes.  Like a lot of Americans, I do occasionally consume alcohol.

2) I do NOT believe that legalizing drugs will solve our nation’s, nor our species’, problems with drugs.  It may actually increase drug use and possibly addiction, at least for a time.  However, I do believe that it will improve or even solve many of our society’s problems with crime, violence, national security, foreign affairs, immigration, governmental overspending, invasion of privacy, and erosion of our civil liberties.  And I powerfully believe that those problems have reached levels of severity wherein it is better to choose the problems of drug abuse and addiction and deal with them outside the context of the criminal justice system.

3) I do NOT believe that abusing any substance, including drugs, is “good.”  But by the same token, I don’t believe that doing so is necessarily “bad” or “evil.”  The badness comes from the effects of the behaviors of drug abuser on their family, their neighbors, and their community.  Human history demonstrates that humans enjoy altering their minds with substances, for medicinal, spiritual, recreational, and social purposes, even discounting chemical addiction behaviors.  Rather than call it evil, we should accept this aspect of ourselves and responsibly and openly learn how to manage it.

So, why am I outspoken on this topic?  Well...

1) Maybe, and I emphasize maybe, I might actually change the opinion of a person or two.  But that is unlikely.  Changing a person’s opinion about anything is almost impossible through mere rhetoric.  Usually, it takes a significant, direct life event to move a person to a change in their beliefs.  But hey, it could happen.  It’s more likely that I may influence a few people who have just never previously thought about the topic at length.  People are going to start having to confront this issue as the mainstream media has finally taken up the topic, and as it starts to affect each of us personally through rising burglary and robbery rates all across the nation.  And of course, initiatives to legalize at least marijuana are springing up on ballots everywhere.

2) Mostly, I simply hope to publicize that this is one of the most significant issues confronting and hampering our nation, and the world, at this time.  By introducing the topic into daily dialogues and showing how it is connected to so many current issues, I hope to help bring the subject of drug legalization into mainstream discourse, and to make others feel comfortable talking about it without feeling like they’ll be labeled a druggie.  There are many, many reasons for people of all political persuasions and all walks of life to support the decriminalization of drugs.  

3) I hope to provide an example of a responsible citizen, a lawyer, a father, a community-oriented person, and a non-user, who neverthless believes that decriminalization is the best thing to do for the preservation and improvement of our society.  To some degree, I feel I also have a special responsibility to speak out as a lawyer.  Lawyers should take the lead in advocating for changes in the law they believe necessary to preserve our nation’s governance by law, our judicial system, our prison system, our Constitutional rights, and the respectability and safety of our law enforcement officers.

By providing such an example, I hope to create an atmosphere where other lawyers, judges, police officers, and especially politicians can feel confident expressing their true beliefs - because in my informal conversations with such people, I believe many have come to the same conclusion as I have.  They just don’t think it’s “safe” to speak out yet.

4) I hope to increase awareness that this topic is not one to merely shrug your shoulders about.  It affects everyone.  Its tendrils creep out into every area of our lives as Americans, even if you have never had an issue with drugs, nor even any family member or friend with addiction issues.  You may not realize how embedded in our society this hopeless effort has become and how many people’s careers and how many industries, political decisions, and even wars are based upon it.

For me, therefore, increasing awareness, establishing importance, and creating an atmosphere of “safety” about the topic is enough.  From there, I have every confidence that the facts and the crushing economic burden of the situation will inexorably lead to decriminalization.  The question is only how much longer we hold on to the failed policies and how much further damage is inflicted upon our society before we muster the courage for change.   

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Thinking about Prohibition 2.0

11/11/2011

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Today on KennebecTom, two thought experiments.   As support for legalizing marijuana grows nationwide, and with the emergence of a new demon called "bath salts", I frequently think of these two scenarios when I discuss decriminalizing drugs with people.

1) The Informed Consumer - What if you legalized ALL drugs, including the crazy bath salts, and sold them at Walmart and Home Depot and Hannaford, RiteAid, etc.?   The catch:  you'd find them in the aisle with the rat poison, the D-CON, the Raid, the acetone, lamp oil, and paint thinner.  And all the containers will have the skull & crossbones poison symbol and warn that it's not fit for human consumption and likely to result in pain and death.  (This is assuming that there'd be any manufacturers willing to take the risk of marketing the products, which would now sell for peanuts since they'd no longer be black-market items - just plain old poison with mind altering effects.)  Then, do what you will.  Let informed consumers make their own choices about whether they essentially want to commit suicide.  Maybe there'd be about 6 months of radical behavior incidents until the big die-off was over, but then I think things would settle down a bit.

After all, gasoline and paint thinner, model glue and nail polish remover are all currently legal and can be purchased without a prescription and without having to show your photo i.d. and sign a log book, as is required for the best of decongestants - pseudoephedrine.  Yet, when I was a juvenile prosecutor, we had many instances  of teens "huffing" these substances to get high.  It's stupid, but you can't legislate against stupid.  It's dangerous, brain-damaging, and deadly.

The best you can do is inform people about the risks, and let them choose how to behave.  Even if it means their own death.  Now I understand this initial position is a bit cavalier, but it's a thought experiment after all.  Of course, like alcohol, minors would still be prohibited from purchase and use, and driving under the influence of such substances would be harshly penalized.  An aside:  years ago I had a case where I learned that you can be prosecuted for Operating Under the Influence while taking a prescription medication that impairs your driving ability "to the slightest degree."  I'd never really thought of it before.  I'd assumed if you were prescribed medication and took it  according to the directions, you were okay.  But no, you can be busted for driving if that stuff impairs you at all.  My client, an ordinary middle-glass soccer mom, paid the price for coupling her prescribed medication with a drive in the mini-van.  I guess it's lucky that my favorite driving drug - coffee - is an enhancer.

And also, it would be sad, I suppose, that a lot of addictive personalities would die off given free access.  Or then again, would that happen?  Perhaps those with addictions likely to drive them to death have already found means of getting enough drug supply to kill themselves despite current laws.  Maybe the mortality rate wouldn't rise.  Well, maybe there'd be a handful of novices who would o.d. on the first try, but if a manufacturer was going to put cocaine on the shelf for recreational purposes, I'd assume it would be watered down (like the true classic Coca-Cola) or would have a recommended dosage well under the death threshold.

And we would be compassionate.  We would take all the funding (or part of it) thrown at the drug war, and offer free rehabilitation and counseling services to anybody who wanted help with a drug addiction.  I don't believe anybody really WANTS to be addicted to drugs.  By all accounts I've heard of, it's a lousy existence.  And most accounts of what happened to people who took bath salts are so horrific that I should think usage would be the number one treatment for bath salts use.  Who the heck would want to try that a second time?

2)  The Cocktail Party - If all drugs were legalized, would America descend into an addictive, violent, drug-induced anarchy, with people randomly murdering, raping, and accidentally killing each other and themselves?  I think not.  For instance, there are alcoholic beverages of extreme potency, like Everclear and Jagermeister, and vodka, and whiskey.  You can drink to the point of stupid and violent behavior very easily with these.  You can drink to the point of death.  But nobody I know does.

When you're lucky enough to go to a nice party with gracious and wealthy enough hosts that a wide range of beverages are offered, the choices range from Diet Pepsi all the way up to the hard stuff.  Most of my colleagues and acquaintances do not rush to the hard liquor and drink themselves to vomiting near-oblivion.  Most of the time, the decision is made based on personal circumstances.  For instance, at most social events, I consider that I am a father of two, that I have a job I have to go to in the morning, that I don't like headaches, I don't like vomiting at all, and a criminal conviction would end my career and livelihood.  So I have one or two beers and call it a night.  Back in college, sure, everybody may have had some wild nights.  But at that point in life one has few responsibilities.  And there are some people who don't survive some of those wild nights.  It's a risk that society painfully learned was worth living with during the failure of Prohibition 1.0.

Now imagine you're at a party and your host offers you Diet Coke, a beer, wine, marijuana, cocaine, LSD, PCP, or bath salts.  What's your pleasure?  Well, I personally don't know anybody who'd try the cocaine, LSD, PCP or bath salts.  I'm sure such people exist, but they don't move in my circles.  I know a few folks I imagine might try the marijuana, but I myself just hate smoke and smoking and things that make my clothes smell, so no thanks.  The hardest I might go would be a scotch and soda, or maybe a double-bourbon and ginger ale (Jack Kerouac's drink).  And I'll bet your circle of family and friends would probably engage in the same analysis.  Also, as a sometimes host, I'd be uncomfortable offering people substances likely to cause addiction, violent behavior, death, property damage, vomiting, or bad odors.  And if I had a guest who trashed my party while wired on bath salts or something, you can be sure they wouldn't be invited back next time.

Now, why'd I write this?  I dunno.  It's just been on my mind as billions of dollars in consumer spending and government aid both flow, in two parallel streams, to Mexico to enrich violent international criminals and prop up a government in danger of being overrun by them.
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    The Daily Consternation 
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    Tom lives on the east side of the Kennebec River and works on the west.  He relocated from Arizona to Maine, by pure choice,  in 2001 and loves music and history.  He may change any viewpoint expressed on this site at will and without warning.

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